WASHINGTON - Yesterday, the Justice Department announced a $1.4 billion settlement of criminal and civil charges against Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig responsible for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster.

Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune release the following statement in response:

“Just a month ago the Sierra Club called on the Obama Administration to hold BP and their contractors fully accountable for the largest environmental disaster in American history. The settlement announced yesterday, like the $4 billion settlement of BP’s criminal charges last month, is wholly inadequate to the damage these companies caused – the loss of human life and the disruption of the entire Gulf ecosystem and economy. With these weak settlements, Gulf communities, families and businesses are being sold out to Big Oil for pennies on the dollar. BP and their contractors must pay the real cost of this disaster, no less than $60 billion, and be held accountable for their careless and illegal operations that created this disaster.”

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The Sierra Club is the oldest and largest grassroots environmental organization in the United States. It was founded on May 28, 1892 in San Francisco, California by the well-known conservationist and preservationist John Muir, who became its first president. The Sierra Club has hundreds of thousands of members in chapters located throughout the US, and is affiliated with Sierra Club Canada.

Further

Academics are increasingly, ingeniously fighting back against an Orwellian "Professor Watchlist" aimed at exposing "radical" teachers. The list has inspired online trolls to name their own suspects - Albus Dumbledore, Dr. Pepper, Mr. Spock - and a Watchlist Redux to honor not trash targets from Jesus to teachers daring to "think critically about power." Now 100 Notre Dame professors have asked to join the list in solidarity, proclaiming, "We wish to be counted among those you are watching."